The adoption of “smart” phone use in the enterprise has lagged behind the productivity gains seen in the consumer market due in part to concerns on how to securely offer mobile applications to employees. When companies do offer mobile access to corporate systems, it is typically only allowed from a limited set of devices and through a restrictive device configuration ensuring data security. These device restrictions adversely impact the functionality of the device for personal use and have slowed adoption of the mobile device as a prominent productivity tool for the enterprise.
For example, Mobile Device Management (MDM) refers to the infrastructure that manages a mobile device so that enterprises can manage the devices that they have purchased and issued to their employees. In this scenario, given the device is owned by the enterprise, the enterprise is entitled to have total control over the device and in this regard, there are a number of companies that offer technology and solutions for mobile device management. However, these technologies are cumbersome, require centralized systems and restrict usage on the device level.
There is also a new trend emerging called bring your own device (BYOD), that is penetrating the marketplace. BYOD reflects a scenario where the employee brings his or her own device with their own personal data into the workplace. In this scenario, the employee wants to have certain work related applications loaded onto the device while maintaining their private applications simultaneously on the device. In this respect, employees are very concerned about the employer deploying a comprehensive device management client onto the device that essentially hijacks the device and potentially violates their privacy given that mobile devices are ubiquitous and attributes like location and presence can be tracked. There is therefore a strong need for an application based policy management system that is differentiated from mobile device management (MDM) systems, which is fairly common these days.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.